Exchange Club buys lunches for essential workers
♦ The civic club isn’t holding meetings but they are putting their caterer, Sweet P’s at The Palladium, to work.
Although their weekly meetings are canceled through mid-may, the Exchange Club of Rome is using its catering money to provide meals for first responders during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Georgia District Exchange Club President Mike Elliot approached the Rome Exchange Club President Patrick Eidson about using the money they usually pay for their Friday lunches and getting their usual caterer, Sweet P’s at The Palladium, to make bagged lunches for first responders.
“I said, ‘Man, that sounds like a great idea.’ So the club has been purchasing 100 bagged lunches and last week we gave them to the Rome Police Department, Floyd County Police
Department and the Sheriff’s Office,” Eidson said.
The weekly distribution takes place at the Coosa
Valley Fairgrounds on
Martin Luther King Jr.
Boulevard. Exchange Club members, including Elliot and Coosa Valley Fair Association president JP Cooper, load up a car to deliver the meals to the designated agency.
The club has planned out meals for a different organization every Thursday through mid-may.
Organizations and agencies include Redmond Regional Medical Center, Floyd Medical Center, Rome-floyd Fire Department and city and county workers.
“We’re doing it for at least six weeks and if we need to do it longer, we will,” Elliot said.
While this is the only service the Exchange Club is doing as a whole, other members are continuing to support the community in different ways.
Elliot said that some of their members have been making cloth masks
at their homes and sending them to residents of long-term care facilities and dropping them off at the schools to be handed out to kids during lunch pick-ups.
“I know that as this goes on, we’ll look at other things that the club and the fair association can do to assist the community,” Elliot said.